Links for Back-to-School Success
School is starting, or has just started, in much of the United States. For many teachers, there is a need to learn new schools, new classrooms or new students — sometimes all three! Back to school is a transition not just for students, but for those working in schools as well.
There are many things to keep in mind at the beginning of a school year. If you’re teaching K–12, you may be setting up your classroom space. For faculty in higher education, a strong syllabus is a good start.
But that’s not all that’s involved in back-to-school planning! There are lessons to create, with professional development to help guide those lessons. There are questions on how to connect with students and build rapport. AI might loom large over your school district.
To make the most of the new year, here is a selection of links that looks at how to start the year off successfully.
Setting Up Your Space
Oftentimes, K–12 teachers will have a classroom of their own to decorate and make into a welcoming space. But what should that space look like? Should it be colorful or austere?
Education blog Edutopia shared “Classroom Design Essentials for Educators” during the summer of 2024. This collection of guides gives best practices for decorating — or not! The information shared is based on research and often keeps affordability in mind.
As an example, in “The Science of Classroom Design,” writers Youki Terada and Stephen Merrill share studies that suggest everything from the value of natural light (but not too much!) to the need for less visual clutter. While many of the findings may seem like common sense, others may surprise you.
Creating a Syllabus
For faculty at colleges and universities, creating a syllabus is providing students a map of your course. The Chronicle of Higher Education has a guide on creating strong syllabi, aptly titled “How to Create a Syllabus,” but guides on syllabus best practices can be found on many teaching and learning centers’ websites, such as this guide from Vanderbilt University.
It’s important to note that the syllabus, as students’ first introduction to a course, needs to be accessible. If this intro is inaccessible, it can be disheartening. Check out this post on Tech-Based Teaching for further resources on making syllabi accessible.
AI in the Classroom (and Being Productive)
Edutopia, mentioned earlier, has shared lists of AI tools that can help with planning lessons under its ChatGPT & Generative AI tag, but other education blogs have posted resources as well. This AI guide from Ditch That Textbook, for example, has a section for lesson-planning tools such as Diffit. Common Sense Education offers a list of reviewed AI tools.
If you don’t want to use AI, you can still explore lesson repositories and remix lesson content in your classroom. Remixing can save a lot of time! Depending on your subject, you can find many lessons online, sometimes based around specific technologies — such as these Wolfram Language–based computational thinking lessons.
Open education resources (OER) and open textbooks, both of which can be changed to suit your course due to Creative Commons licensing, are also options. The Mason OER Metafinder (MOM) is an aggregated search engine that trawls several OER sites. Your school’s librarian may be able to offer additional ideas of where to look.
Using Evidence-Based Teaching
Having lessons to share doesn’t help students if they’re not designed with learning in mind. That is, some lessons may not be grounded in evidence-based practices, and as such, they’ll be less effective for learning. If you integrate cognitive research into your class from the start, it gives students a chance for early success.
If you want to learn more about evidence-based teaching, the Tech-Based Teaching blog has shared many resources before, such as this explainer on retrieval practice or several of the books reviewed under the Book Review tag. Beyond that, two excellent sites to explore are The Learning Scientists blog and the Science of Learning blog, both of which are regularly updated with new insights.
Being Kind to Your Students (and Yourself)
It’s important to consider kindness in back-to-school planning. Students may be struggling, as are teachers. At the beginning of the school year, consider ways in which you might want to offer grace. Cate Denial’s post on a pedagogy of kindness, and her similarly titled book, may offer food for thought on what that might look like. Likewise, on education blogs such as MindShift, tags like “sel” or “kindness” share further ideas.
Kindness should extend to yourself. With teacher burnout on the rise, consider ways to practice self-care where you can. One option is to follow along with the Happiness Calendars put out by the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, which offer daily acts grounded in science that are designed to promote wellness, but your self-care may look very different.
Here’s to a successful start to the school year!
About the blogger:
Jesika Brooks
Jesika Brooks is an editor and bookworm with a Master of Library and Information Science degree. A lifelong learner herself, she has always been fascinated by the intersection of education and technology. She edits the Tech-Based Teaching blog (and always wants to hear from new voices!)
